Pages

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

Adeline's first month impressions

The adventure begins!

The first days of the trip weren't that easy. I wasn't feeling at ease fo sleeping in the tent. It was hard to fall asleep since I had some stomach aches from the stress. I was really not feeling confident and secure to be in the Australian outback.
But thanksfully, things changed. As the weeks passed, we met other travelers and along with Tim, I start to enjoy the adventure at not worry about the rest.

Camping

The camping spots are easy to find. Since we just need to attach the tent in two points for it to hold, a small square of grass it all we need. So fa, no problem.
For me, this is the first time that I sleep over so many nights in a row under a tent. And it is truly cool! Now, I think that I feel probably more at ease sleeping in a tent than in the hotel room or at friends places. Our self-inflatable matrassses with pillows and sleeping bags allow us to sleep confortably and quite well. No back pain in the morning!
Regarding other commodities, Australia can be proud of having great ones. Public toilets and BBQ areas are available in most towns making it easy to clean, and do all the necessary things of the normal life. For showers, if we've reduced the number of showers we used to take per week, we suceeded to keep a good rithme of at least a shower per week which is probably the minimum.

The Landscapes, wildlife and flaura

Since the start of this trip we've been thought some great landscapes. They are all very different and host their own specific wildlife and flaura.

Landscapes:

Beaches (all arround Tasmania)

Cliffs (on the Great Ocean road)

Tropical forrests ( Great Ocean Road, South Sydney and south Western Australia)

Eucalyptus Forests (a bit everywhere)

Mountains (Tasmania, Flinder ranges, Alps)

Plaines and sdeserts (lots of it ... between Adelaide and Perth especially)

Wildlife

Koala (means "no water" in aboriginal)

Gangourou

Wallaby

Dophins

Tasman Devils

Birds

Insects ...

Other travelers on the road

On the road we met quite a lot of other travelers Most of them are doing road-trips with campervans or 4WD. There is every style, some are like us. Age wise, there is a bit of everything. Some young and older ones and when it comes to nationalities, if there is a leading quantity of Germans and French, we also saw some Spanish speaking ones.
I'm quite impressed by the amount of backpackers and travelers that you can see arround here.

The Aboriginals

The aboriginals are the natives of the land. They where here before everyone else and live here since over 40000 years. When the english arrived in Australia, they brought with them all sorts of deaseases as well as alcohol, which all together participated to decimed most of the natives that had close to no-resistence to all of this. Today, there are about 700 000 aboriginals left in the country. Most of them are excluded from the society. They aren't offered jobs and have families that are tortured by domestic violence, un-education and acoholism.

We didn't had seen it that much during our six month in Sydney, but it is stricking to see all of them walking arround, drunk in the more remote cities.
Still a tabou subject in Australia, the government is only trying to make up with history since about 10 years, and it will probably take another decade or two to see an improvement if any.